Read The Orpheus Deception Online
Authors: David Stone
The Orpheus Deception (49 page)
“One for the ditch, Mikey?”
“How many have I had so far?”
Fyke considered the bottle.
“Three. Small ones.”
“And you?”
“Three. Large ones.”
“I could use some coffee. We’ll be on the ground in thirty minutes.”
“The field is open?”
“They have a night crew for emergencies. I told them we were having trouble with the GCA radar. They’ll light up the field for us.”
“Okay . . . Not true, is it? About the GCA?”
“No. It’s fine. Coffee?”
“Coming up.”
Fyke was back in a couple of minutes. Right at the edge of the forward horizon, dark against a field of stars, was a large, low black mass, with a small cluster of lights, in a concave curve around the edge of a broad seacoast. Fyke handed Dalton a cup of rich black coffee and strapped himself back into the copilot’s chair.
“Manado?”
“That’s my hope.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“Mandy was telling me about this ghost you’ve been seeing.”
“Has she? Our Mandy has a little problem with discretion.”
“Was it a secret? She didn’t think so. You told Delia about it. Seeing a ghost. This Porter Naumann fellow. Did I know him?”
“He knew you. He worked out of London Station, but you were with Tony Crane. Porter and Mandy created Burke and Single.”
“Burke and Single? That’s one of ours?”
“Yes.”
“I never knew. And how did Porter Naumann become a ghost?”
“He died. That’s pretty much a prerequisite.”
“Don’t be flip, Mikey. You know what I’m asking.”
“Don’t you already know the answer?”
“I’ve been making a few educated guesses. It has something to do with how you’re no longer working for the CIA.”
“We’re working for the CIA right now, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. But it feels like freelancing, doesn’t it? But, then, it always did. Nobody like us ever really belongs to the Agency. We’re all part-timers and casual labor, as far as the Agency is concerned, unless you’re Deacon Cather. My point is, what happened to Porter Naumann, was it your fault?”
“No. Not that part of it, anyway.”
“But you then set out to do something ghastly to whoever killed him?”
“Yes.”
“And in the doing of that, other people got hurt. This lady in Venice?”
“Yes. Indirectly.”
“But the mainspring, the core of it, you didn’t start all that, did you? You just did what you could do along the way. How’s Porter doing now?”
“Last time we talked, he was trapped in Cortona. He couldn’t leave. And there were things he was seeing in the street; looked like black smoke in the shape of . . . demons, I guess. Coming up out of the stones, and they were hissing at him. He was worried.”
“Jesus. I don’t blame him. I’d pee myself. He told you all this?”
“Yes.”
“What did he do? Just slide down a moonbeam and pop into your room?”
“No. Porter wasn’t a moonbeam kind of guy. I was dreaming.”
“So you never see him when you’re awake?”
“Not anymore.”
“But you used to?”
“Yeah. I got a face full of some kind of powdered drug. Peyote and datura, they said. That’s when I started seeing Porter.”
“Peyote and datura? That stuff will stay in your skull forever.”
“Thanks. And on that cheerful note—”
“So, Naumann, he really was just a hallucination? His ghost, I mean.”
“The phrase
just a hallucination
doesn’t quite catch the impact of having one follow you around most of the American Southwest, does it? Anyway, he didn’t think he
was
a hallucination.”
just a hallucination
doesn’t quite catch the impact of having one follow you around most of the American Southwest, does it? Anyway, he didn’t think he
was
a hallucination.”
“You talked it over with him?”
“Yeah. He was pretty convinced he was a real ghost.”
“Were you?”
“He made a great case for it. Jury’s still out.”
“Have you seen him since you left Italy?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“So he was telling you the truth? He
is
stuck in Cortona. At least, his ghost is. You gonna help him with that?”
is
stuck in Cortona. At least, his ghost is. You gonna help him with that?”
“How would I do that?”
Fyke thumped the controls in front of him.
“My point
exactly.
You see, I know what you’re thinking, Mikey.”
exactly.
You see, I know what you’re thinking, Mikey.”
“Do you?”
“You’re thinking about the essential evil horrible awfulness of you.”
Dalton said nothing, staring out at the lights of Manado.
“See? I thought so. Some free advice, Mikey?”
“Is it worth it?”
“Every
fooking
penny.”
fooking
penny.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not you.”
“What’s not me?”
“Something happens to
everybody,
Mikey. Even to ghosts. To take on the weight of every bad thing that happens is a mortal sin. The sin of pride.”
everybody,
Mikey. Even to ghosts. To take on the weight of every bad thing that happens is a mortal sin. The sin of pride.”
“You took on the weight of Kuta.”
Fyke sipped at his coffee, fumbled at a pocket, pulled out one of Mandy’s outrageous colored cigarettes, lit it up, exhaled softly, sending a plume across the instrument panel. He offered one to Dalton, lit it too.
“Yes. I took on Kuta. And am I not setting it right even now? The great thing about being a Catholic, Mikey . . . you
are
a Catholic, aren’t you?”
are
a Catholic, aren’t you?”
“Nope. Not anymore. Episcopalian.”
Fyke made the sign of the cross over Dalton.
“Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
You are now officially shriven of the crime of being an Episcopalian and have become an honorary Catholic. So, Mikey, lad, the great thing about you now being a Catholic is you get forgiveness.”
You are now officially shriven of the crime of being an Episcopalian and have become an honorary Catholic. So, Mikey, lad, the great thing about you now being a Catholic is you get forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness from whom? The people you hurt?”
“Jesus no. Hardly ever. Most people are miserable, surly sods who wouldn’t forgive you for a lukewarm martini. Mainly, you get it from God.”
“Yeah? How can you tell? He sends you an e-mail?”
Fyke touched his chest.
“You feel it in here. Not right away. After a while. It comes to you.”
“You really believe that, Ray?”
Fyke was quiet for a while, watching the smoke drifting in the cockpit. He tapped his ashes into his empty coffee cup.
“I have come to believe it, Mikey. But I have come to it very slowly.”
“And you think I can?”
“What you’re doin’ now, how’s that workin’ for you?”
There wasn’t much to say to that.
They were on the ground at Sam Ratulangi forty minutes later, a single-strip airfield ten miles northeast of the mangy little coastal town of Manado, in the middle of low, rolling hills and fields of coconut palm and copra farms. The Immigration counter was closed. One sleepy guard blinked at their passports and waved them through to the taxi stand, staring fixedly at their backs as they walked away. He was on the phone a few seconds later.
They hired a large old Mercedes, painted bright pink, and gave the young female driver—a very handsome Chinese girl with a six-hundred-watt smile who gave her name as Tangerine—instructions to take them to Tia Sally’s bar. She gave them a look but started up anyway. Within a few minutes, she had them cruising through the low, dark hills and narrow country roads lined with coconut palms, with the lights of Manado a pale glow on the southwest horizon line. Fyke was asleep in minutes, but Dalton sat there, awake, his left hand aching brutally, staring out at the passing scrub brush, the occasional village, closed up for the night, flitting by his window in a blur of shutters and cinder-block walls, his eyes heavy with fatigue.
He closed his eyes.
Someone was flashing a red light in his eyes. He opened them up and saw that the interior of the taxi was full of flickering red light. Tangerine’s face was reflected in the rearview mirror, her eyes glittering with the red flaring lights that were pouring in through the back window. Then they heard the short, sharp klaxon sound of a police siren. Fyke snapped upright, blinking into the glare, straining around to look out the back window.
“Who the
fook
are they?”
fook
are they?”
“KIPAM,” said Tangerine. “I know the truck.”
“The commandos? What do they want with us?”
“I don’t know, sir, but I have to stop.”
She pulled the big Benz over to the side of the road and rolled her window down. Steamy scented air poured inside the car; frangipani and car exhaust and the earthy smell from a nearby stand of copra. Black shadows flicked across the rear window. A cone of hard-white light pierced the side windows, and someone smacked the glass beside Dalton’s head with the tip of a baton, hard enough to make him jump, and waking up his temper.
Dalton rolled down the window and squinted into the beam of a halogen flashlight, seeing a vaguely military figure behind the light. The man had a steel ASP baton in his other hand. He leaned down into the window and put the light on Ray Fyke, who blinked back steadily.
“You come in plane?” barked a high, Chinese-sounding voice.
“Take that light out of my face,” said Fyke.
“You come in plane?” the soldier barked at him, smacking the roof of the taxi with his baton and sending a sharp lance of pain through Dalton’s skull, which, in turn, woke up the green scaly thing that lived deep down inside Dalton’s brain. Then he did it again.
“You betta answer, boy! Get you outta car!”
Dalton glanced across at Fyke, who was now grinning back at him.
“Why are these kids so pissed off at us?”
“No idea. Let’s find out,” said Fyke, an edge in his voice.
Dalton sighed as the kid banged the roof a third time—he looked forward and saw Tangerine flinch every time the stupid kid dented her roof; the scaly thing that lived in his lizard brain now had a migraine—Daltonpopped the door open, forcing the young soldier to give ground as he got out onto the roadway. They were now standing in the headlight glare of a vehicle that, from what Dalton could make out, looked like an armored Humvee with a big CIS .50 MG on a roof-mounted swivel. The soldier, an extremely muscular and apparently neckless young man with a military high-and-tight, wearing a starched and pressed Indonesian Marine Corps uniform with MP markings, backed away a little more and held the halogen light up in Dalton’s face, effectively blinding him. Fyke was out of the car and on his feet on the other side, a second soldier in front of him, almost nose to nose if the kid had been a foot taller. The soldier facing Dalton had his ASP raised, the tip near Dalton’s face, since he was using it to point at Dalton. Which was stupid, since Dalton could rip it out of his hand in less than a second if he wanted to. Which he didn’t. Yet.
“What plane are you talking about?” said Dalton, trying for a placatory tone, trying to cool the situation down.
“Night Officer at Sam Ratulangi call. Say plane just land. No markings. You fly that plane? Come in at night. No papers!”
“Yes. I fly that plane. It has no markings because it’s being repainted. And I showed the guard our papers. What the hell business is it of—”
“Unmarked plane? Why no markings?”
“It’s being repainted. What are you so goddam angry about?”
“No angry
me,”
screamed the kid, waving the ASP around in Dalton’s face and tugging his pistol out with his left hand. “You big trouble! You under arrest! Get on knees now!”
me,”
screamed the kid, waving the ASP around in Dalton’s face and tugging his pistol out with his left hand. “You big trouble! You under arrest! Get on knees now!”
He heard the other cop yelping at Fyke in Chinese and Fyke’s calm, measured answer, also in Chinese, which Dalton did not speak. At least the kid in
his
face could speak English. Dalton tried one last time.
his
face could speak English. Dalton tried one last time.
“How about you put the sidearm away and just tell me what the trouble is?”
The kid’s eyes were huge in the headlight glare. He looked like he could be stoned on something. Probably adrenaline. And steroids, judging from his build. He put the pistol on Dalton, his finger inside the trigger guard: “You under arrest. You kneel down! Kneel down!”
Dalton lifted his hands up in front of him, palms out.
“Look, Corporal, if we can just—”
The soldier tensed, and, in a sharp, quick move with a lot of force in it, swung the ASP at Dalton’s temple, a killing blow if it had landed. It didn’t. Dalton caught the strike with his left hand—the spider-bitten hand—and a bolt of blue fire ran right up his arm all the way to his shoulder.
He heard a blow, and a strangled yelp, from the other side of the car. Fyke was not a yelper. He and the MP both turned to look. But they were committed now. Dalton caught the muzzle of the MP’s pistol in his right hand, forcing the barrel up. The MP triggered a round, but the slug went zipping away into the night—he heard Tangerine screaming something in Chinese—and Dalton ripped the pistol out of the Marine’s hand and slammed him across the cheekbone with the muzzle. The kid’s head snapped back, and a ribbon of blood flared out in the glare of the headlights. The kid went down. Dalton booted him in the belly, just to make his point. From the huffing sound on the other side of the taxi, Fyke was doing roughly the same thing to the other MP. Fyke straightened up, panting a bit, laid his left hand on the roof, and looked across the car at Dalton.
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